Ok, not exactly, but danah boyd wrote an interesting essay arguing that class is playing a big role in which teens hang out on which site. From her essay:
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
It's an interesting essay. It goes back to each site's roots -- MySpace is rooted in the L.A. music scene. Facebook is rooted in Ivy League colleges. I've written about this before here. MySpace is much more about self promotion, Facebook is more about networking with friends. danah's observations are coming out of her interviews with teens from all over the country. I would love to see an actual socio-economic breakdown of who is on both sites. I'm not sure it's so clear cut. The Facebook crowd still loves music and may maintain a MySpace profile primarily to keep tabs on their favorite bands. MySpacers may have grown tired of the increasing amount of spam on the site as well as adults in authority searching them out and busting them or their friends for what was on their public profiles. The attraction to clean design vs. DIY craziness seems more like personal preference than a class issue. Putting teens in specific boxes like this feels kind of like a John Hughes movie -- it's very 1980s. Are teen tribes or cliques still this delineated and rigid in high school? And would they be demarcated by which social network they're on? Which group is on Tagged or Sconex? My sense is that those sites are regional. Tagged feels more midwest and Sconex feels more big northeastern city. Anyhow, it's definitely interesting food for thought. Would love to hear your thoughts Ypulse readers...
Remember, you can ask danah more about her research in person at the 2007 Mashup!
Posted by anastasia
Web
Comments
Pretty interesting to say the least, whether or not I (like you) believe in such harsh lines of demarcation or not. I sense a slight derogatory slant to the categorization of Facebook kids, but I guess if that's your deal, so be it.
My personal opinion (regardless of socio-economic background, I think) is that MySpace pages are next to impossible to read with their crazy backgrounds.
Also, when I had first heard of it, it was from someone using it as a way to find anonymous hook-up partners via the internet, which at the time (and now) seemed much too dirty for me. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and that was mine from MySpace: gross internet brothel, essentially.
Posted by: zmarker | June 25, 2007 11:20 AM
Really interesting article. I wonder which utilities have created this division. I know many teens use both, but Facebook created a false sense of security since back at its conception era it was just for students.
Posted by: Kelly Mahoney | June 25, 2007 1:02 PM
while you can't deny the trend it still seems early to be definitive.
Facebook was college only for over a year and became THE college social network.
I would not be surprised if a lot of people were not fully aware that facebook was open to everyone with such strong college branding.
It will be interesting to find out if facebook over time becomes more wide reaching in it's social share and losses it's "high class veneer".
would that change how it competes with myspace?
Posted by: Stefan Hayden | June 25, 2007 2:17 PM
Even if the divide danah describes does exist, it's going to diminish over time as Facebook saturates more of the population.
But in the meantime, it should be unsurprising that social software reflects real-world social dynamics; the surprise would be if there WASN'T a stratification or demarcation between 'good kids' and 'bad kids' online.
I kinda wish we got that surprise more often!
Posted by: Robin | June 25, 2007 6:05 PM
Great start to the conversation, but I agree that it's too easy and too early to draw clear cut distinctions.
Looking forward to seeing both you and danah at the mashup!
Posted by: Tony P. | June 26, 2007 5:30 PM